I wanted to do something a little different this week. I attended the StarCityGames.com Open Weekend in Atlanta, but I didn’t do amazingly well in either event so I’m not really going to do a tournament report. Instead, I’ll tell you what I played, what I would play if the tournaments were this weekend, and why. This weekend was a blast, and the only downside was not doing well in either tournament. I got to see a lot of good friends, play a bit of Magic, learned a lot about Standard and Legacy, and we even went to Fogo again (it was Kali’s first time)! It was an awesome weekend, and I’m really looking forward to attending another one of these Open weekends. Both tournaments were run smoothly by Jared Sylva and Casey Hogan, and the good people at StarCityGames.com were awesome enough to let Kali judge on Sunday, as well as take her Level 1 test (which she passed!). My friend Blair attended the event without playing in either the Standard or Legacy tournaments, opting to trade and play EDH, as well as Judge the second day. Overall it was a ton of fun, and I would recommend you attend as many of these as you can, since the tournaments are the main attraction but definitely not all the fun there is to be had.
With that said, we can really get down to business. First of all, I really wanted to play a U/W deck based on the “tap out” versions that had previously won the first few PTQ’s on Magic Online. With Rise of the Eldrazi now legal, a few new awesome additions were necessary, but mostly Wall of Omens and Gideon Jura. Kali and I woke up around 4am to make the two and a half hour drive to the event site (including a +1 hour time change), but we ended up running very late due to a heavy traffic jam in downtown Atlanta, as well as driving in the wrong direction for about 30 minutes (THANKS GOOGLE MAPS). After the hour of extra driving, on top of the traffic, we arrived at the event site around 9:30, with only about 30 minutes to get both of our decks together. In Birmingham, there really isn’t a good store for singles, so we really have to rely on our friends at these type of events to help us build our decks. I tend to sell my cards at almost every event in order to help pay for things like food, lodging, and extracurricular activities, so we don’t have much in the way of a collection most of the time. In addition to that, every card that I needed for my deck was between $40 and $60 at the moment due to them being Mythic and Planeswalkers. I needed multiples of Jace, the Mind Sculptor; Elspeth, Knight-Errant; and Gideon Jura. Unfortunately for me, most of my friends had already loaned out decks at this point, or were playing U/W themselves, which left me in a bit of a pickle. I considered not playing the event, but we had already driven all the way there and I didn’t want to waste the day or opportunity to play, so I ended up borrowing what someone could loan me: Boss Naya. It wasn’t the best of decks, but it wasn’t terrible. It definitely wasn’t my first choice, but I can’t really argue with results.
After registering the 75 that my friend J.T. Hendricks shipped me, I was ready to battle. I had finished writing down my decklist with only about 10 minutes to spare before the tournament started, but I had forgotten to add a few new cards like Vengevine and Gideon Jura, so it definitely was not the optimal version of Naya. I was pretty disappointed, and I plan on being fully prepared (card-wise) for the next few events. If I can’t afford particular cards, then I’m definitely just going to stop selling things and start building a collection. Kali and I are not really struggling financially at the moment, so I don’t really feel the necessity to sell things as much as I used to. I started the tournament off 4-0, beating Jund twice, Bant, and BGW Junk. I actually won a game against BGW Junk where he cast Mind Shatter for 5 on turn 4, thanks to Lotus Cobra, two Noble Hierarchs, and a fetchland. It was quite ludicrous, and all I had in play at the time was a Behemoth Sledge, three lands, and Stoneforge Mystic. After winning the first four rounds, I lost my feature match against Jund, and then followed that with another loss to Jund in the 6th round. I dropped after that in hopes of going to Fogo, since I had to win 4 more in a row to maybe win $100. I wasn’t happy with my deck, and didn’t really feel like grinding it out at that point.
That night we had a blast, since it was Kali’s first Fogo experience. She tried a little bit of everything, from the Parmesan Crusted Pork Loin to the House Filet, and even some delicious sausage they had prepared (that’s what she said). The bill was not cheap, but we both agreed it was definitely worth it. Hopefully we will go again soon, but it is tough when it costs so much. Delicious and infinite meat has its price, and it is high, but man is it good. After getting “meat-drunk,” we headed back to the hotel and passed out after only a short while. Kali and I were staying with friends, but slept on an air mattress as to avoid paying money for using their beds. Thanks again, guys! The next morning, we woke up around 8am to get some breakfast and get to the event site before 9am. I needed to acquire a deck, since I own zero Legacy staples. I really wanted to play the Reanimator deck that LSV has been tearing up Magic Online with, since it seems absolutely absurd. If you haven’t seen it, it is basically a toolbox combo deck that has a ton of different answers to opposing combos, as well as a package of various large creatures to put onto the battlefield. I played a few matches with a friend’s version, and I don’t think I’ve ever played with a deck I felt was more powerful. It is like playing Vintage against Extended, and has tons of disruption to protect the combo, as well as disrupt your opponent’s combo. I would not recommend any other deck for Legacy, but I would probably play a few cards maindeck to help in the mirror. Here is the list Gerry Thompson played to a second place finish, and I would change very little from this list. I particularly like the sideboarded Realm Razer, as well as the singleton Minamo. I saw Gerry untap Iona to block on multiple occasions, and it was quite hilarious how many people walked into it.
Creatures (7)
Lands (16)
Spells (37)
About 75% of the time, getting Iona into play is your best bet. Most decks have very few ways to deal with her, and having cards that answer her in two different colors is pretty rare. Goblins has both Stingscourger and Warren Weirding, but most decks just rely on their Swords to Plowshares to kill creatures. In these scenarios, you goal should be to get Iona into play backed up with Force of Will or Daze, and win the ensuing counterwar. Over the weekend, I discovered a lot about Legacy that was probably pretty evident to most people. I rarely play Legacy, but when I do I try to play decks that interact with the opponent. However, most people opt to play decks that just lock the opponent out before they can do anything at all. It is almost always better to have an aggressive strategy as opposed to a passive one, since you won’t always be able to answer the things your opponent is doing. I decided to play Goblins since it won the last event, and I didn’t have anything else to play. Additionally, I thought Reanimator wouldn’t be so bad due to the fact I was playing multiples of both Stingscourger and Warren Weirding, giving me plenty of outs if they played an Iona or similar fatty. I started off well enough with 3-0, but ended up going 4-3 overall before dropping. I noticed that in every round I won, it wasn’t because I was doing anything particularly broken, but mostly that my opponents couldn’t assemble their game-plan quickly enough. Goblins isn’t a ridiculously fast deck, and it doesn’t have answers to everything, so I felt really behind against a lot of things, including Enchantress and Belcher (which were two of my three losses).
Goblins isn’t a deck I would ever play in the format again if I had another choice, since it contains neither a broken combo nor Force of Will, which really means you are probably going to lose. I really regretted not playing 4 Cabal Therapy in the 75, as Wasteland can only do so much. I felt like I was playing a different game than my opponents, and every time I cast AEther Vial I felt like it was a joke. Every round except for one, the goal of my opponent was to limit the extent of interaction between the two of us, while I twiddled my thumbs and hoped I wasn’t dead. I have a serious problem with a format where the goal is to do the most broken thing possible so that there is no real Magic going on. This is one of the reasons why I really hate Vintage, since it usually just depends on who has the better draw. I mean, if two combo decks are battling and both have broken combos backed up with Force of Will, where is the skill involved? If the only decision that matters is whether or not to mulligan, I don’t consider that a real format. My opponents did everything from trying to reanimate Iona, kill me on Turns 1-3, or lock me out of the game completely with Solitary Confinement. There is a lot of variety in theory as far as choosing different combos in Legacy, but there is not a lot of interaction, which is something I am pretty disappointed about.
As far as Legacy goes, it is fun to play if you enjoy ridiculous combos. I have never been a real fan of pure combo, and love playing formats that reward interaction. When my opponent generates 10 mana on the first turn and kills me with a Goblin Charbelcher, or puts 14 goblins into play with Empty the Warrens, I don’t feel like that is real Magic. While you can find ways to disrupt your opponent with Force of Will or Mindbreak Trap, mulliganing to those cards against an unknown opponent can have devastating effects if you are incorrect about the deck they are playing. There are plenty of keepable hands in Blue decks that don’t contain Force of Will, but sometimes you just lose a game or match based on a failure to draw any interactive card. In most formats, you have more than a single draw step to find an answer, but Legacy is pretty specific on what you need to have and when you need to have it. That is one of the reasons Force of Will is a $50 Uncommon, and a $100 rare on Magic Online. If you don’t play Force of Will, then you are probably doing it wrong.
Reanimator has the strongest gameplan and disruption plan of any deck in Legacy, and Gerry’s only loss on the entire day was in the finals. To me, Reanimator feels like Dark Depths for Legacy, having the most consistent and powerful draws, as well as a really solid Plan B. Show and Tell is amazing against decks trying to beat you with graveyard hate, letting you just “cheat” your fatty into play. Pithing Needle is a solid answer to most of the format’s Graveyard hate like Relic of Progentius, but doubles as an answer to annoying cards like Maze of Ith or Sensei’s Divining Top. You don’t have the vulnerability to Ravenous Trap that Dredge does, so luckily you don’t have to play around that. You can even use Pithing Needle on Faerie Macabre, which can be a pretty sick answer that you might not see coming. One of the biggest disadvantages I had going into the Legacy tournament was that I was not really familiar with a lot of the theory behind the format. I had a broad idea of each deck’s win conditions, and knew what they were ultimately trying to do, but I never knew exactly what opening hands to keep or what creatures to tutor for in each matchup. I actually lost one match because I didn’t search up Siege-Gang Commander with Goblin Matron against someone who dropped a Moat on the next turn, and drew blanks for the rest of the game. It was quite disappointing.
I will try to build a Legacy deck on Magic Online soon, since the format is fun if you know what you are doing. However, if someone new is getting into the format, there is a lot you need to know. Your average Joe can’t play his homebrew White Weenie deck and expect to do even remotely well, unless they build it to combat a particularly hostile format. Cards that play fair are underwhelming and underpowered, and you should play as few of those as possible. Counterbalance is becoming worse and worse, since people are building decks that can play around it or beat it faster than they can assemble it. Luckily, the Counterbalance decks are becoming smarter, and usually adopt a gameplan of their own to win faster via Natural Order and Progenitus, but even that combo pales in comparison to an Emrakul or Iona on the first or second turn. If you aren’t doing something broken, you probably shouldn’t play. With that said, you can build your fair decks to compete against the unfair decks, but why would you? They are doing broken things while being prepared for the other broken things. Their nut draws are unbeatable, and your nut draws usually consist of playing Wild Nacatl or Goblin Lackey, or a similar “broken” creature that just doesn’t do anything. I know that these styles of decks put up results on occasion, but the format is starting to warp towards decks that are too powerful for fair decks to handle. Hopefully people planning on playing interactive decks will figure out how to do this profitably.
In the end, I would say that Legacy is a healthy environment because no one deck is unfairly dominant, but I have never been the biggest fan of eternal formats in general due to their degeneracy. With a new Standard shaping up, this should be as good of a time as any to come up with something innovative with Grand Prix: DC coming up. As of now, I’m planning on playing “Superfriends,” which is what I’ve heard a lot of people calling the Planeswalker deck. It is just a great answer to Jund, and the cards interact so well together. Patrick Chapin article from Monday did a great job at explaining why it is good, and exactly what changes occurred that made adding Red to the deck viable (specifically not playing Lightning Bolt). Hopefully I’ll be able to acquire all the cards needed to battle with it before too long, and I already have most of the cards on Magic Online, but the lack of relevant dealers in my local area make that a pretty big problem. I learned a lot about Legacy this weekend, but the high cost of cards on top of a plethora of insane combos will push me away from playing it competitively for the time being. If I can get Reanimator built, maybe I’ll have some fun doing broken things too, but until I can buy some $80 beat-up Underground Seas or $35 Entombs, that will probably not be possible. Be sure to wish Kali congratulations for passing her judge test on Facebook, and shoot me a friend invite if you enjoy my articles. If you have any questions about Legacy or Standard, please hit up the forums and I’ll do my best to answer. Until then, cut Baneslayer Angel from your deck. Gideon is just better.
Thanks for reading.
Todd
strong sad on MTGO